This neat little collection represents a life-saver for inefficient
and addle-brained CD collectors such as myself. Far from being
one of those eagle-eyed professionals
who take a little notebook filled with the titles for which they are seeking,
I can never remember which volumes I have of any particular set. Aside from a
plea of poverty which only holds true after the first of the month these days,
I never managed to get further than Volume 2 of RCA’s Carnegie Hall Chopin
recordings. Every time I put it on I would think to myself, ‘wow, this
is good, I must look out for the others in the set’, and never thought
of them while out in the wild. At last RCA have given up in despair on me and
my kind and brought all of Kissin’s RCA Chopin albums together in a 5 CD
folding case with a see-thru concertina of trays which is interesting, but sometime
a bit like wresting your discs from a feisty Rubik style puzzle.

If we’re talking puzzles, one of those I have to confront here is the love-hate
polarisations which Evgeny Kissin seems to arouse. I would hope to pride myself
on a certain amount of objectivity, but have to say my pastexperiences have
generally led me to expect a positive response from my overworked faculties.
Yes, there are indeed some flaws, and you have to be prepared to take a powerfully
masculine kind of Chopin which may not be to everyone’s taste, possibly
not even Chopin’s. For me the joy of having a piano sound you can bite
on like a big piece of balsa wood and a sense of effusive joy in much of this
live music-making has value beyond price.

The first two CDs of this set are volumes 1 and 2 of Kissin’s remarkable,
indeed almost legendary Carnegie Hall recital in 1993, when he was only just
into his twenties. Interestingly, both the original discs and this re-release
emphasise the music rather than the performer in the booklet notes, something
which seems more often than not to have been turned on its head in recent times.
These are very much live recordings, and while the audience is generally held
well back through a useful amount of presence in the piano sound, there are those
whose applause can start well before the final notes of a piece have decayed.
This is a minor point and not one aimed at putting anyone off - just one of the
few trade-offs in having such a magnificently heroic and symphonic Polonaise
Op.44. It’s not all power playing, and there is a fine transparency
in the throw-away brilliance of the Grande valse Op.42 for instance, and
the Nocturne op.27 No.1 is given a marvellous sense of searching mystery.
The Scherzo No.2 Op.31 takes on the quality of Mussorgsky in some of its
darting eccentricities, and whatever you think, you can’t call it dull.

That was the quality which kept bringing me back to volume 2, the one nagging
me from within all the other Chopin discs to be joined by more of similar. The Sonata
No.3 under Kissin’s fingers becomes an elusive masterwork, one which
is filled with marvellous moments, but demands that you come and listen again
to make sense of some of the wilder hills and troughs. Kissin’s performance
flows, but like any complicated text he demands your full attention otherwise
you are going to be left behind: he demands you raise your game to meet his,
rather than compromising with easier gestures and a narrower dynamic range. Despite
all the ‘wow’ factor, in the quicksilver figuration of the Scherzo for
instance, Kissin builds a beautiful structure from the almost Brucknerian melodic
moments in the Largo. Back to plenty of power in the Finale, but
within the superhuman pianism there is so much dynamic variety, so many layers
and so much intricate detail that I refute those who would reject this as so
much brutalism. This is high drama, but with a turbulent and confrontational
message rather than just a bravura display - yes, there is an element of young
wizard’s showmanship involved, but if you can allow yourself to be carried
along on the crest of Kissin’s wave then you’ll find yourself crying ‘bravo’ at
the loudspeakers by the end, disturbing the neighbours and frightening the cat.

It’s Mazurkas all the way after this brain-boiler of a sonata, and the
more relaxed moods and open textures are a welcome change. Kissin is and remains
entirely inventive and surprising in these pieces. Every time I come back to
these I find myself thinking ‘I don’t remember that’, which
is good - every time feels like a kind of first time, as if you were there at
the concert. The poignancy of a Mazurka Op.68 No.4 set against the witty
wiles of Op.30 No.3 and contrasts of Op.63 No.1 create an endlessly
fascinating programme, the ordering of the pieces in the recital creating its
own dynamic pace, and with the eternally wonderful Op.17 No.4 as a penultimate
reward.

Discs three and four bring us away from the hothouse atmosphere of Carnegie Hall
live, and into the cooler world of the SWF Freiburg studios. Kissin takes his
time over the Ballades, emphasising their intensity but without becoming mired
in too much indulgence. Where it counts, Kissin bursts out into compulsive dance
rhythms or effulgent melodic gestures, and the rewards compensate for moments
where density of pianistic technique might create protestations of over-blown-ness.
Let’s face it, if you can’t bear titanic pianism then Evgeny Kissin
may not be your cup of tea, but if you can make it past your own preconceptions
then the softer centre he can show may persuade you that there is more to his
musicianship than the merely prodigious. Have a listen to the Ballade No.4
Op.52. It’s nice, but not chocolate box ‘nice’: the melodic
line sings, but isn’t allowed to rest on its laurels, moving forward almost
against the accompaniment and showing you where some of Rachmaninov comes from,
in the colours, shapes, structures and lines of almost the entire piece. Kissin
builds and weighs his moments against the form of the piece as a whole, not lingering,
but moulding time and volumes of sonority.

With time suspended in the Berceuse Op.57, another big shape challenge
in the Barcarolle Op.60 and more quicksilver inventiveness in the Scherzo
op.54 I’m quite easily sold on CD 3. The Preludes Op.28 on disc
4 have been reviewed elsewhere
on this site, and were not approved of by David Wright, who preferred Vladimir
Ashkenazy. I’m not going in for a great deal of comparisons in this review,
partly because I consider this box to be just a big bouncy bargain and not to
be missed on any account, but also because Kissin is rather a phenomenon in his
own right, and deserving of an audition in this repertoire even where it is clear
that other versions have their own right to existence. I do have Garrick
Ohlsson resonating in my ears in this cycle however, so was intrigued to
hear how different Kissin’s version is. Kissin seems more able to make
the Preludes Op.28 into more of a coherent whole rather than a set of
disparate pieces, and for this alone I value his recording, even though the diving
in the climax of No.4 and some other moments take a bit of getting used
to. Rather overdone rubato is a quality of these brief pieces which Kissin does
seem rather willing to adopt, and I would agree that in numerous cases the music
is better left speaking more for itself. As part of the set as a whole it is
still a pretty stunning collection however, even though there are some strange
engineering moments, such as the volume dropping 28 seconds in and reviving at
40 seconds of the Prelude No.9, and again between 00:54 and 1:10 or so
- as if we didn’t know the difference between soft playing and someone
mucking about with the mixing desk, bah. As with the live Sonata No.3,
Kissin is high octane with the Sonata No.2, taking Chopin’s mating
of disparate themes and textures head-on and revelling in their forward-looking
modernity. I like the character of this performance, though can see how it might
disturb those of a more sensitive disposition. At some points you can not only
hear the strings bending but almost sense the entire piano changing shape under
Kissin’s mighty touché. Once again however there are plenty of elegant
and sensitive layers under the fearsome technique, and the famous Marche funèbre is
both a defiant cry from and a fascinating exploration of the mysteries of ‘the
other side’. The presto Finale sounds like the wind machine from
a piece by Olivier Messiaen. CD 4 ends with the eternally heroic Polonaise
Op.53 which as you might imagine suits Kissin down to the ground. He takes
it at quite a pace, reading it less as a statement of noble pride as a fast ride
in a Porsche adorned with gold-leaf. Not my favourite interpretation, but impressive
for all that.

Disc 5 brings us back to where Kissin sounds best in this collection, live. Given
on 26 July 2004 in the Médran Hall in the mountain landscape of Verbier
in Switzerland, the slightly more brittle piano sound in the SWF recordings is
once again brought back into full and succulent sonority. More than ten years
on from Carnegie Hall, Kissin isn’t quite so spectacularly showy, though
this has to do with the repertoire in the recital, and there is no lack in fireworks
when in full flight. It would be nice to be able to see this as the crowning
achievement to top off this set, but if anything the rather stop-start rubato
which can be a bit disturbing in the other discs is taken to new heights in these
Polonaises and Impromptus. Again, there is much beautiful and massively impressive
playing, but if you turn the volume down and light a candle or two you could
be listening to a rather precocious restaurant pianist, meandering his way through
famous pieces and stretching the time with elastic abandon. This is not entirely
fair, but we’re moving dangerously close at times, and one might have hoped
that greater maturity would have introduced a closer affinity to the composer
Chopin rather than towards the pianist interpreting like mad. Kissin’s
prowess as a pianist means that technical obstacles cease to exist, or at least
appear so to do, so the only direction to go is in a kind of re-invention of
the music into more and more personal directions. I’m not particularly
offended by these performances and indeed, I enjoy the live ‘vibe’ which
comes with the recording. There are indeed pieces with which Kissin can grab
you, set your emotions into turmoil, like the darkly brooding Polonaise Op.40
No.2, butI do however have to admit feeling more comfortable with
the greater sense of musical coherence Garrick Ohlsson brings in most of these
pieces.

At 5 CDs for the price of around two and a half discs this is a good deal if
you are just embarking on your voyage of discovery with Evgeny Kissin or if,
like me, you have one lonely volume of the RCA recordings knocking around which
you bring out when no-one else will do and you simply must have some real
piano playing. I’m not the only commentator to harp on about Kissin’s
perceived flaws in some of these works, and I have to admit that after many hours
of concentrated listening I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s better
taken in smaller doses than for marathon sessions. All things considered I do
give this set a big recommendation. It’s one of those things every piano
collection should have around, for those times when you want to go LARGE with
Chopin. Having encountered several different approaches in Chopin’s piano
works of late, including the more ‘authentic’ touch of Alice
Sara Ott, I’ve been made more than usually aware that there are many
ways to skin the Chopin cat. Kissin’s is not the only way, but for a uniquely
powerful and pianistic legacy this is one collection you won’t want to
be avoiding, and I should hope there will be more to come as well.

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